I thought I would set this up as some people now have F1 2013.
Post away on your career progress.
If you wanted you could pretend a year in classic mode was a year in career and post as if you were the driver your were racing as.

Pre-season news
With strong reports that Luiz Razia’s sponsors have not paid Marussia, some claim that his seat is now under pressure, and could be available to other drivers without a seat. Many have been connected with the seat, including the promising Jules Bianchi, Timo Glock being handed the seat back, and also Vitaly Petrov in an attempt to boost Russian support.

However, as absurd as it may sound, Marussia had a competition on twitter to allow one of their followers the chance to drive in the team’s new simulator. 20 year old, Jamie Franklin was the lucky fan to be awarded the opportunity. Though not much was heard of it at first, a couple of days later, the team tweeted:

“Hope Jamie enjoyed the experience. In all seriousness, this guy has some real talent,”

Whilst this could be passed off as nothing more than a bit of twitter banter, could the struggling Russian team employ a man whom has never raced in lower categories? From a financial point of view, it could be seen as very cheap, but what would the world of Formula 1 think?

First race at Melbourne, Sauber gave me a very optimistic target of 8th in qualifying and 10th in the race. I qualified 17th as the Hulk qualified 15th.

At the start, I jumped up to 12th by Lap 1, with Hulk ahead and Ricciardo behind. I couldn’t keep up with Hulk on Primes and had D-Rizzle on my gearbox for the first six or so laps.

As the leaders pitted, I inherited second as Hamilton, Massa, Button and Perez filed out of the pits behind me. I was starting to struggle with my tyres by that point and ran wide at Turn 8, as Hamilton and Massa passed me. As I rounded Turn 12 just before the hairpin, I happened across both Hamilton and Massa sideways across the track, forcing me to take avoiding action over the grass – but without getting a penalty.

I lost all my pace and pitted on Lap 10/15, rejoining in 13th. Kimi Raikkonen – who’d been involved in an incident earlier on – had served a drive-through and had come out right behind me. I tried to hold him off, but he eventually got the better of me.

I was ages ahead of Bianchi but losing a second a lap to Kimi and held on to finish in 12th, which became 11th as Di Resta had a penalty applied post-race. I missed my race target while my team mate finished 7th.

In a shock turn of events, a new driver has announced his intentions to participate in the 2013 Formula One championship. He is hoping to get a drive for Williams or Sauber, but will be happy to make the grid at all. Will he get the seat he wants, or will he have to work his way up from the bottom?

This is going to be awesome, I may have to use Professional mode or easier though, F1 2012 really caught me out compared with 2011!

Quali – 19th
Practice had been difficult enough, only beating Bianchi by half a tenth, but quali I really had to push. It’s a testament to the AI that I could only beat Bianchi by 2 tenths of a second, when on previous games, it wouldn’t be difficult to get into Q2 and beat my team mate by 2 seconds. Just over half a second behind Vergne and Maldonado, who finished in the drop zone too.

After a tough qualifying, I was looking forward to the race, hoping it would yield the same level of difficulty and sense of achievement. My start was pretty poor (Probably because of the primes) as the cars behind me swarmed passed. I out-braked them into turn one, but didn’t really gain much. However, down into turn 3, I was able to get passed a couple of them, as they scrapped with each other for position. Most were on options at this point, and due to the tyre scaling, were all pitting on laps 4/5.
I was in about 4th at this point, having not pitted. I eventually pitted on lap 10, for another set of primes, hoping that I may just be able to do one stop less…if the options lasted more than 4 laps. Can’t remember too much exactly, apart from Sutil really struggling to get by.
I tried to extend the amount of laps I spent on the primes, to reduce the amount of time on options, but by lap 22, they were shot, completely gone, leaving 7 laps for the options…
I came out in 12th, which soon turned into 11th when Bottas retired. Luckily for me, Hamilton lapped me, which meant one less lap for the options. They seemed to hold up a little better than expected, and could hold off Vergne just long enough to finish outside the points.

My pace was a little better here, as I’ve always enjoyed Malaysia. However, despite that, it still wasn’t really enough to get into 18th, let alone Q2. The biggest shock of the session was that Rosberg finished 18th, only 6 tenths in front of me, so a pretty poor effort from him. I extended the gap to my team mate by 7 tenths, but I don’t expect to enjoy such a margin at other races. I failed the objective of 18th, but I’m not too bothered, they can’t just strap a new rear wing to my car and expect me to fight with the midfield immediately!

As I enter the race, I am actually told that the new rear wing didn’t work…well, that’s just great!

Heading into the race, I wanted to do something similar to Melbourne, maybe stop once less and jump the pack. How wrong I was. I don’t have much time for a lengthy review of the race, especially as it was much the same as Melbourne, apart from the fact that I did three stops, and still my tyres were so worn by the end, that I struggled to get the power down in 4th gear, meaning I crossed the line in 19th, having gone so slow from the final corner to the start/finish straight, that Bianchi, whom had decided to pit on that lap, crossed the line before me, whilst I crossed the line spinning backwards like a lunatic. Not my best race ever…in fact, probably one of my worst. 19th isn’t what I was hoping for.

Hamilton won the race, from Massa and Hulkenberg, the standings are now:

I’m really enjoying this edition after completing my first career race (and having a bit of a play with the other modes), there’s so many little minor improvements and tweaks that add up to an all round bit step up over 2012, which admittedly I didn’t really get on with and abandoned after half a season.

Race 1: AustraliaQualifying: 13th – Race: 4th
I could only qualify 13th despite Hulkenberg being 6th, over a second faster than me. I was about to give it a last try in Q2 but the KERS failed, spoiling my lap before it even started. I had a troublesome start as I was stuck in between the drivers at turn 1 but as Hulkenberg was battling the two Ferraris I passed them all plus Webber and took fourth place. Hulkenberg then overtook the Australian himself and we kept our positions for the first five laps. On lap 5 I pitted but Hulkenberg and Webber continued, and after a lap the Red Bull had overtaken my team mate but I was just ahead of both. For a few laps I kept Webber at bay, then he came closer and closer and I had to start defending on the main straight, where Webber’s speed with DRS wasn’t greater enough than mine to overtake me. Hulkenberg remained close behind but never attacked, and with great care I held onto P4 until lap 15, when Vettel crossed the finish line beating the two Mercedes. With this result we are 3rd in the constructors’ championship.

Quick race at Malaysia. Red Bull Racing, Vettel being my teammate, I was leading but the opportunist Kraut double crossed me and took the lead and I couldn’t do anything.
Pissed.
Multi 21 Seb, yeah, Multi 21!
Too much politics, I’ll uninstall F1 later this year. Will never play this game again.